How Mobile Shopping Trends Are Shaping the Way Schools Collect Fees

There are more than 6.8 million mobile payment users in Canada as of the end of 2019, or just over 20% of the population. By 2023, it's estimated that more than one in three Canadian consumers will make proximity-based mobile payments.

As consumers continue to rely increasingly on their smartphones for online shopping needs, it’s no surprise that schools are looking for ways to replicate this same experience for students’ parents who need to pay for school fees. Mobile shopping is fast, easy, and convenient—something parents have come to expect nowadays.

Millennials are also driving the trend toward mobile shopping and mobile payments. Of the 7.3 million Millennials born between 1981 and 1997, 33% are now parents. Having grown up with the internet, in an era of great technological change, these parents are 2.5x more likely to adopt new technology when compared to other generations. As busy moms and dads, millennials are always seeking ways to simplify their lives with the aid of technology. Naturally, mobile apps and services can help play a role in this.

Many K-12 payment services, including MySchoolBucks, offer mobile apps with full retail-shopping experiences that make it easy to pay for school fees and items with a smartphone.  With the MySchoolBucks app, parents can:

• View any products/fees available at your student’s school and quickly make purchases
• Browse, filter or search to find products faster
• Receive alerts when payments are due for a particular fee
• Pay for lunch programs

There are a lot of priorities that parents are juggling everyday. Busy morning routines and evening activities can quickly fill up a family's schedule. It can be all too easy to forget to send a cheque for a field trip. With the MySchoolBucks app, parents have the convenience to be able to pay for those school fees from wherever in just a few seconds.

With mobile shopping growing, schools have a unique opportunity to offer the same experience to their students’ parents and collect school fees easily and quickly. If you’re not already partnering with a payments vendor today, start the conversation. We would love to help.